Trapping and killing grey squirrels could lead to breaking the criminal law

I know someone who traps and kills squirrels. He could break the law if he hurt a cat

Traps designed to kill squirrels and rodents may hurt or even kill a cat and if so the person who set the trap would be committing a criminal offence and be liable to be prosecuted by the RSPCA in the UK.

I find it bizarre to be honest that a lot of people in the UK hate the grey squirrel and want it to kill it. You see people on golf courses setting traps for squirrels and my neighbour, at my last address, trapped grey squirrels and bludgeoned them to death because they scratched the trees! He is a decent man too. I just don’t get it. Yes, I realise the grey squirrel pushed out the red squirrel but are they to be punished and slaughtered for it?

Bearing in mind that there are a lot of grey squirrels there is real potential for injury to wandering cats if people develop the habit of setting traps.

The small trap in the picture is called a ‘feen trap’. It caught a cat. The cat survived and wandered around with it on his/her head in Cheltenham on May 6th 2015.

It is not illegal to use the feen trap to kill rodents. Also, it is legal to trap and kill a grey squirrel in the UK provided red squirrels are not at risk. This is speciesism but I shan’t go into that.

Source: RSPCA issue warning after cat found with killer….

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Comments

Trapping and killing grey squirrels could lead to breaking the criminal law — 4 Comments

Caroline Burton on July 21, 2015 at 1:03 pm said:
I think the problem is that the grey squirrel is an introduced species in the UK, whose presence endangers the native red squirrel population. Why war should be declared on the grey squirrel is beyond me; surely if we can ‘put a man on the moon’, we can develop a method of birth control for any species that overpopulates – although we have that already for our own species and it doesn’t seem to be working!
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- Michael Broad on July 21, 2015 at 2:17 pm said:
  Well said Caroline. I agree with you. Thanks for contributing.
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Dee (Florida) on May 24, 2015 at 6:24 pm said:
I’m not able to decipher what criteria humans use to determine which animals they consider nuisance and which aren’t. I don’t have a frame of reference that clues me in, because I never learned that any animal could be such a nuisance that they should be bludgeoned to death.
To me, squirrels are benign.
I have the same feeling about pigeons and sea gulls, which I hear people say that they hate.
I was acquainted with a man one time who told me that he “clipped off” rabbits in large numbers because they intruded his vegetable garden. Again, I have no understanding as to why it would be such a crime for a hungry rabbit to eat a morsel of lettuce, etc.
Ofcourse, cats suffer under this same “mystery” criteria.
In my world, I have found more nuisance humans than any other creature. I may have had the desire to bludgeon them, but I don’t.
It seems that man hasn’t really evolved through the ages when it comes to their attitudes about animals.
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- Michael Broad on May 24, 2015 at 7:58 pm said:
  To me, squirrels are benign. I have the same feeling about pigeons and sea gulls, which I hear people say that they hate.
  I am the same. I don’t get this hatred for squirrels and pigeons. They have an equal value as any other animal for me. Some people are heavily into speciesism. I do find the world strange. I always have.
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